I subscribe to a weekly e-newsletter from Road Bike Rider. Each issue closes with a Question of the Week. These were the options for a recent poll:
- Just my one road bike
- 2 road bikes
- 3 road bikes
- 4 road bikes
- 5 or more road bikes because you can never have too many
This is the result of that poll:
I am among the 26.81% of 1,854 respondents who own three road bikes. Over 85% own more than one road bike. Perhaps not surprising given that the respondents are readers of a cycling publication.
How did I come to own three bicycles?
I bought my first road bike in 2010. My steel Alchemy.
By 2011 I was living in The Netherlands, riding a lot, and wanting a frame that was stiffer than my steel frame. Alchemy built a titanium + carbon bike for me. These two bikes came home with me to Kuala Lumpur in 2012.
In 2013, I made plans to ride the BP MS150 and the TD 5 Boro Bike Tour in Texas and New York, respectively. I needed a bike that was easy to travel with. I bought a Ti Ritchey Break-Away.
I made another trip to the US in 2015 for a cycling vacation. Alchemy Bicycle Company had by then relocated from Austin, Texas, to Golden, Colorado. My cycling vacation was based 40 km away from Golden, in Boulder. Convenient, as I could order another bike from Alchemy, pick it up when I arrived and ride it on my Cognoscenti adventure. That would be much more fun than travelling with my Break-Away.
To make room for my new Alchemy Eros, I sold my two other Alchemy bikes. The steel bike went to a friend in KL, and the Ti bike went to a colleague who took it with him when he returned to Canada.
I bought the steel bike back in 2019. The friend I sold it to only rode it a few times in five years. After a conversation with my Biker Chick, we agreed that I should buy it back for sentimental reasons if nothing else.
I ride all three bikes. To get a view of use over the bicycles’ lifetimes, I dug into my Strava data, and this is the result:
The graph shows the three road bikes I own now and the Ti bike I sold in 2015.
The Eros is by far the bike I ride the most. It is the one that is most comfortable for any ride longer than 50 kilometres.
That historical 1:1 ratio of the number of rides on the Eros versus the total number of rides on the steel and Break-Away bikes holds today. So far in 2024, I have ridden the Eros sixteen times and the steel bike and the Break-Away a combined total of seventeen times. I do enjoy alternating between them all.
There is an old joke among cyclists. Ask the question, “How many bikes do you need?” and the answer is, “Well, if N is the number of bikes you have, N+1 is the number of bikes you need.”
I don’t need three bicycles, let alone four or more. I can do without the Break-Away. The last time I packed that bike into its case for travel was in 2018. Despite its sentimental value, I could part with the steel bike.
I do like the three bikes that I own, though. I will keep them for as long as I can.
Old Roots, New Routes 